Camporeale is a mediocre town in a landscape filled with the emptiness of broken dreams. It lies twenty-two miles to the south and west of the city of Palermo. On the island of Sicily, a place of endless despair on the edge of Italy, that makes you a
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The Mafia of Sicily has been at war for years with another Sicily-based criminal fraternity.
This is called La Stidda. The Star. According to two prominent pentiti (informers), the organization grew during the 1980s, its member, disgruntled or per
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According to the official web page of the New York Police Department:
“There is no delineated time frame for cold cases.”
The killing of police Lieutenant Joseph Petrosino on the evening of March 12, 1909, in the city of Palermo, Sicily, is per
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The FBI and police are currently looking for buried bodies at two horse farms in upstate New York, several news outlets report. The dig is in connection with a recent indictment of ten Gambino crime family mobsters.
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Ten members and associates of New York’s Gambino crime family and the Sicilian Mafia were indicted in Brooklyn federal court this week. They are charged with racketeering conspiracy, extortion, witness retaliation, and union-related crimes committed
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In 1948 when young Alberto dalla Chiesa, a captain in the carabinieri, the military police, arrives in Corleone, in the province of Palermo, one of the first things he organized is a census of all the families who live in the town of about 10,000. He
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Sicilian Mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro passed away today. He was 61. The elusive Mafioso was viewed as the last man to know the people on both sides of the law involved in some of Italy’s most heinous and profitable crimes. He took those secrets t
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They called them gli scappati “the runaways,” hiding in Venezuela or finding refuge in Miami, drifting through New York, even in the lemon orchards of Monreale. Where they really ended up was New Jersey. At least the ones that were the major targets.
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Truman Capote, the late, famous American novelist and playwright, once said, “Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act.” A more than perfect observation of what took place in New York and various outlier areas of north-eastern Am
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According to Giuseppe Montalbano, a deputy in the Regional Parliament, “Sicilians are by nature delinquents, all mafiosi or tending to mafiosi.” To him, “the mafia constituted an occult middle class with its fingers in every social stratum, imposing
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This is a story about a crime that never exists which triggered another beyond belief in a place saturated with a history of death and betrayal. About a man who organized his own funeral without knowing it and the youth who helped to kill him so he c
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Since its beginnings, the Sicilian Mafia was led by and comprised of men. Cosa Nostra was the ultimate “Man’s World.” Men went out to commit crimes while wives sat at home. Sons followed in their fathers’ footsteps, while sisters stayed at home. As t
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Historians referring to the second Mafia War in Sicily believe it to have been triggered by an event. But if so, which one? Being the Mafia, it involves violent death, treachery, and an abundance of confusion.
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Sicilian Mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro seemed like a ghost. For three decades he was among the world’s most wanted fugitives. Authorities only heard whispers. Even after arresting everyone close to him, he remained elusive. Until today. When polic
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Down a narrow alleyway off the Via Alloro, in The Kalsa District of Palermo City, is a building that was once a convent. Built in 1601, it now houses the state archives, over a million documents, files, manuscripts, papers that tell the history of Si
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Ten alleged members of the Sicilian Mafia in Agrigento were arrested today, Italian news agency ANSA reported. They are charged with trafficking drugs and extorting businesses in the cities Agrigento, Licata, Palma di Montechiaro, and Canicatti along
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Matteo Messina Denaro is a Mafia ghost. Despite being one of the world’s most wanted fugitives, authorities remain unable to pinpoint his whereabouts. The Sicilian Cosa Nostra boss has been on the run since 1993, but Italian police believe he continu
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It was almost certainly too much for Luciano Raia. On a wet, chilly Tuesday morning, January 11, 1966, three women dressed in black moved across the gardens of Piazza della Vittoria, towards the immense block of a building standing on its west-side.
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The Mafia, it’s claimed, were all over it like a rash. But were they? A story with more slack ends and dangling threads than Joseph’s Coat of Many Colours. Zelda Fitzgerald said, “It’s the loose ends with which men hang themselves.” After fifty-three
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Mobsters and payphones formed a decades long lucrative partnership. Conducting business on one of those things was part of their modus operandi. It was a way of avoiding wiretaps, while still getting to talk to associates far and wide. Unfortunately,
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